


Kagami's Playpen

by Ravenclaws_do_it_better



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Rivalry, Gen, I don't know what to tag this but the first chapter Kagami literally thinks he's about to die, Kagami would face god and walk backwards into hell to give the devil flowers, Kagami's mother is a Gift and i love her and she hasn't even been introduced to the story yet, They're shinobi okay?, Tobirama just want to create jutsu and beat Izuna is that too much to ask?, Tobirama's ever increasing levels of exasperation, Tobirama's perpetually judgemental eyebrow, WATCH YOUR SPAWN DAMMIT, mentions of child death, shit happens
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 22:56:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15520518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravenclaws_do_it_better/pseuds/Ravenclaws_do_it_better
Summary: Uchiha are, apparently, chronically unable to watch their spawn. Luckily for them, Tobirama does not actually enjoy war or the child-hunting parties of his father's time. Unfortunately for Tobirama, Uchiha spawn are much like leeches in that once they get attached they are very difficult to get rid of. Enter Uchiha Kagami, age four, who fears neither Sage nor Madara (his mother, on the other hand, well, at least she likes his new friend).





	Kagami's Playpen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PandaFlower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandaFlower/gifts).



> Shoutout to PandaFlower who's "a blaze held in hand" series inspired this and who let me scream about this plot. Also, came up with this horrible, horrible story name which I love and which has been stuck ever since I read it. *finger guns*

Senju Tobirama is prepared for a lot of things when he senses the foreign, Uchiha-warm chakra signature on Senju lands by the river where his brother committed treason.

A messenger with a note of peace for his brother.

A spy attempting to gather information on his clan.

A declaration of war carried just barely over the border in the body of his dead clansmen.

What he gets is none of the things.

What he gets is a half-soaked Uchiha _infant_ running around on the Senju shore of the river collecting flowers with a kunai that is too big for its hands. It can’t be older than four years and had likely just begun training which _begs_ the question of exactly how it got there. Uchiha can be described many ways but one of those ways is not careless with their young. He knows it cannot be a soldier with the same certainty he knows that no Senju child of a similar age is a soldier. As much as he hates to admit it (and he does, with every fiber of his being), but Hashirama and Madara are too similar in that they will not stand for small graves and smaller soldiers; as long as either of the two holds the headship of their respective clans there will not be a child soldier on the battlefields.

This fact is all well and good but it still doesn’t answer why there was a toddler in front of him.

(Is it even old enough to be on its own? He knows most of the Senju parents let children its age run around the compound freely but the child is rather far from the Uchiha compound.)

In the end, the lack of other supervision and the child’s slowly increasing distance from the border between the two clans’ lands spurs him to action. It’s a moment’s thought and he’s gripping the child by the back of their shirt, the Uchiha clan crest gripped tightly between his fingers as he hoists them up to eye level. The child fights back, kunai flashing out in a desperate attempt at freedom. But, Tobirama is both a fully trained shinobi and an adult, it is easy to knock the weapon away from its intended destination before making eye contact. The child tenses at this, his chakra signature flashing with fear before relaxing at the eye contact, face falling in a pout.

“I’m in trouble aren’t I?” he mutters and Tobirama raises a mildly judgmental eyebrow at the action. It is, as a matter of course, not the normal action for a child who’s been captured by enemy shinobi. Usually there is quite a bit more crying and fear but _this_ child just keeps staring at him and pouting.

“You are indeed. Tell me, why are you on Senju lands?”

“I didn’t mean to be,” the child protests. Loudly. “I thought I saw something so I came to see and then there were flowers and I just wanted to get some for my Mom!”

“And you decided the best flowers were in Senju territory little Uchiha?”

_That_ gets a reaction. The child’s eyes fly wide in shock at the name, finally looking down and spotting the symbol on his happuri where it hangs off the belt of his kimono. He hadn’t been expecting a confrontation when he’d dressed that morning, though he’d at least had the sense of mind to grab his sword before coming to the border in addition to the kunai he always kept on him.

Then, dark eyes are back on his face, this time wide with fear. Tobirama does not feel a twinge in his chest at the terror that shakes the small body. He does not wonder in the back of his mind if this is how Itama and Kawarama looked in the moments before they died: tiny, terrified, and too young. The child attempts to stab him with the kunai he’s still holding with all the desperate intent of a shinobi who knows they cannot win and still tries; but the grip is loose and sloppy, untrained and shaking from fear. It’s child’s play to raise the hand not holding the boy and knock it from his hand. It’s much harder to pretend he’s unaffected afterwards as the child breaks out in heaving sobs that rock his small body but he manages it.

By now Tobirama realizes that this is, somehow, a mistake. Carelessness had led the child to escape its minders. The foolishness of youth had no doubt led it to the border when it spotted something that caught its interest. He was lucky that the river was shallow and the current slow otherwise he’d have been swept away by the current when he tried to cross. The Uchiha child was equally lucky that it was Tobirama’s brother and not his father who was clan head. In this case, it meant he could take a course of action that would’ve been strictly forbidden had his father still been alive without feeling a single ounce of guilt. It would probably be best if he took the child to Hashirama who would, without question, baby the child and then send him happily back to the Uchiha clan with a strangling hug and full stomach. No doubt, his brother would also gush over how proud he was of Tobirama and how he hoped that one day they would have peace so that he could see the child again. Touka, he knew, would relentlessly mock him over his actions and his so-called soft spot for children. It was complete blasphemy of course, he performed jutsu for the children of his clan because it was a learning experience for them and any bit of knowledge may at some point save their life while on a mission.

It's simple cause-and-effect though, if he kills this child the war with the Uchiha clan would be rekindled with vigor. If that happened, well, many would die, more would be injured. It would be costly, in people and resources. No, it was better if they remained at this tentative pseudo-peace rather than rekindling the fighting as it had been under his father. Which means there is only one course of action to take in order to avoid both the annoyance of his close family member’s reactions and unnecessary war.

He starts walking, one foot then the next until he’s standing on the shore of the river-border once again. The child, dangling still from Tobirama’s grip on the back of his shirt, is screaming quietly; he tries to choke back loud piercing sobs, his hands shoved in his mouth with all the strength in his young body in a failed attempt to muffle them in front of his clan’s enemy and the man who will be his murderer. He sobs harder still at the sight of the water.

“No, n-no, p-pl-ease, please, no-o-o.”

Tobirama ignores him and steps out onto the water, quickly making his way across the river. The child ceases his pleading by the halfway point, sinking into a frozen near silence, too terrified to make sound anymore he sobs instead in shaking silence and heaving, gasping breaths. Tobirama raises his arm straight out in front of him as soon as he reaches his destination and meets the boy’s eyes.

“Stay off Senju lands,” then he’s lowering his hand until the boy is able to gather his feet beneath him on the opposite shore. There’s a stillness as the child stares, in shock, confusion, fear still possibly, then the child bolts through the brush. There’s no care to stealth, his every movement makes a loud sound as he crashes through, the path he makes could be followed easily by even the most amateur tracker. Tobirama turns around and makes his way back to the Senju compound. The child will be found easily, already he can feel several more Uchiha-warm signatures making their way too the boy, strong and burning in their maturity and contrasting the child’s sparks. It would be best if Senju Tobirama is nowhere near, lest they suspect something untoward and their clans end up at war against each other anyways. He’s officially done his good deed for the next year, sparing the life of one who would no doubt become an enemy in the future, however distant a future that may be.

Hashirama can _never_ find out.

~

A week later, when Tobirama again feels an Uchiha chakra signature on the border in the place where his brother and Madara met, it is not unfamiliar. He frowns but allows himself to stand and make his way to the border. He does not change into his armor, nor does he stop to retrieve his weapon. There are no other chakra signatures around the child that would signal a minder or any sort of supervision making the possibility of battle unlikely. If, however, someone from the Uchiha clan shows up in search of the child it would be better for him to not have a weapon other than his kunai to reduce his visible threat level and decrease the likelihood of violence occurring in defense of the child. The possibility of an ambush doesn’t slow his steps; the Uchiha clan would never put on of their young in danger just to bait a trap. So, wearing nothing but his civilian clothes and kunai, even his happuri left behind this time, Tobirama makes his way to the border once more. He finds a familiar scene, the Uchiha child searching through the bushes, half-soaked and on the wrong side of the river. It almost seems to be déjà vu as Tobirama easily grabs the boy by the back of his clothing and lifts him to eye level once more. The boy even squeaks in shock the same way, though the dramatic paling at the sight of him happened a bit later during their last encounter.

“S-Senju-san!”

Tobirama raises one eyebrow judgmentally and the boy trembles for a minute before visibly attempting to collect himself. He doesn’t manage to accomplish this but Tobirama allows himself to be impressed; he knows many of the child’s older relatives would flee at the sight of him if confronted alone. The perceived invulnerability of a child never exposed to a battlefield he thinks and then dismisses it.

“I’m Uchiha Kagami, I dropped my kunai last week. Please let me find it? I’ll leave right afterwards!”

He continues to stare impassively as the boy, Kagami apparently, visibly wilts with every silent second that ticks by. Just as the boy looks like he is about to burst into tears Tobirama moves forwards, leans down just long enough to grab the kunai from where it rests on the ground exactly where he’d thrown it without breaking stride, and continues to the river. When he is on the other side he sets the boy on his feet once more and presents him the kunai.

“I am Senju Tobirama, stay off Senju lands.”

Paling even further Kagami again breaks for the trees, rushing through them very loudly and with a very visible trail. The pale man allows himself to break his passive mask for just long enough to roll his eyes before turning on his heel and making his way back to the compound. Perhaps _now_ the damnable Uchiha will finally learn to watch their young.

~

When he feels the by-now familiar chakra signature at the river _again_ Tobirama has to resist the urge to throw the sword in his hands. He does not, because he is in the training grounds in the middle of the compound and doing so might injure someone, especially so considering the children standing around behind him watching with awe as he performs the large, extravagant, and devastating jutsu that most in their clan can perform neither as regularly nor with such precision as he. It makes him the only shinobi apart from the children learning their first few jutsu to use the training ground close to the compound to practice ninjutsu and therefore makes him the largest source of awe and entertainment to the children of the Senju clan, his nephew included. He can’t say he truly minds, oftentimes he’ll spend time afterwards helping the children with their own ninjutsu or other aspects of their training. Learning many things is one of the key aspects of how the Senju clan has survived in the many wars against the Uchiha clan; if the duty of teacher to these children falls to him, well, he only hopes he teaches them enough to allow them to survive to adulthood proper.

So, he does not allow himself the show of dangerous and irresponsible temper in front of the impressionable children. Instead, he sheaths his sword with a frown and begins walking to the entrance of the compound.

“Tobirama-sama! Where are you going?” one of his younger cousins yells.

“Yeah, Uncle Tobi, what’re you doing? You promised a story afterwards!” his nephew yells after him.

“I’ll return soon, there is something I must take care of first. When I finish I will give you all a lesson, is that acceptable?”

Cheers follow him away from the fields but he doesn’t allow that to distract him from his mission. He finds, again, a familiar scene awaiting him on, again, the wrong side of the river. Tobirama doesn’t pause and instead immediately grabs the child. Kagami doesn’t even respond, just stares up at him with a bit of terror in his eyes.

They stare before Tobirama does not sigh and does not pinch the bridge of his nose with his free hand, no matter how much he desperately wants to.

“What now?”

“I didn’t get my Mom any flowers!”

Thus begins the staring contest: four-year old child versus twenty-year old adult shinobi.

“You’re going to keep coming back until you get the flowers, aren’t you?”

This is getting ridiculous, clearly desperate measures need to be taken in order to make the Uchiha clan guard this particular child more vigilantly.

“Yeah.”

“Just pick the flowers.”

He lowers the cheering child to the ground and watches the boy run off. Evidently, allowing the child to cross the border and return to his clan under his own power and without proof of a confrontation with a feared enemy apart from, likely wild and generally unbelievable, stories will not make the boy’s minders more vigilant. The next logical step is, of course, showing the _very real_ danger the boy is placing himself in and which they are facilitating with their negligence. The Uchiha, overprotective of their young as he had thought they were though is now questioning, will not let the boy out of their sights until he is actually old enough to defend himself meaning Tobirama will no longer have to come out to the border each week to play babysitter for a child that’s not even part of his clan. A true win-win situation, so to speak.

He allows this thought to repeat through his mind on a loop as the child runs around wildly. Flowers are bunched in his hand sloppily; stems are being crushed and cut too long and unevenly. They’ll likely not survive the trip due to this manhandling, or child-handling, so he silently resigns himself to taking extra care with the trip. His plan is dangerous enough with the child’s involvement, adding tears to the equation has the possibility of making things much worse.

“I’m done!”

He refocuses on the child who is looking up at him now, waiting on something. To be taken back across the river perhaps? That is the precedent that had been set with their previous interactions, he supposes. It is not how this encounter is going to end.

Mutely, Senju Tobirama, feared as one of the strongest shinobi of their time, lauded as the fastest shinobi in the elemental nations, and with a mastery of water jutsu not seen in living memory, picks up the tiny Uchiha spawn once more. He carries the child something closer to normal, held close to his body under his arm like one of his scrolls instead of by the back of his clothing. It would not do for the cloth to rip during transport or for the Uchiha to take offense to how he was carrying the boy. Kagami cranes over his shoulder to look up into his face, confused at this change in procedure, but Tobirama ignores him and moves off quickly. It does not take long for the boy to realize that they are not, in fact, heading over the river. He can tell the exact moment Kagami realizes this by the stiffening of his body, the speeding of his breath. Tobirama ignores it and keeps moving.

With his speed it does not take long to reach the road that passes through Senju lands. If he goes right he’ll go deeper in until he eventually reaches where the road splits off into the long and winding path that his clan uses for trade. It takes almost three times as long to reach the compound using the path as it would to walk through the trees, even at a civilian speed. He doesn’t go right. Instead he turns his body to the left and begins making his way out of Senju lands. The familiar chakra signatures of his clan’s guards pass without comment as he steps over the border into the unclaimed buffer between Senju territory and Uchiha territory. He can feel their curiosity in the swirls of their chakra when they spot the boy, clearly not Senju and even more clearly terrified. The boy is so terrified, in fact, that he hasn’t even thought to use the kunai in his hand to try to free himself. He wouldn’t be able to, and even if he did he wouldn’t make it very far, but that the thought hasn’t even appeared to cross his mind is another hallmark of his young age.

The journey through the free land was easy, the flat ground of the road allowing him to speed up even further without jostling the child. So, it is soon that he begins to come upon the border of the lands of the Uchiha clan. He can tell the moment the border guards see him, long before his eyes spot them and long after his chakra sensing had. The sudden fear, one of the shinobi immediately fleeing, likely a messenger to report back to the compound that Senju Tobirama was making his way up the path. He ignores all of this however, his only acquiescence to trying to keep the peace and calm their nerves his reduction in speed. They don’t come out of hiding: don’t threaten him or try to rescue the child. He’s not entirely certain they’ve realized what he’s carrying or if they have, that the boy still lives. Tobirama is not known for letting his adversaries live, Uchiha especially. Were this any other circumstance he would have dropped the boy there to return under his own power, child returned and peace kept. It is different, however, so instead he sets his eyes on the exact location he knows the border of their lands to be, a border he knows as well as he knows the border of his own clan’s lands, and keeps walking. He has a point to make.

They don’t attack, can’t attack technically due to his not being on their lands. The presence of his “captive” puts the sanctity of the no-man’s land, as established in the last treaty their clans had ever made and the only part of it to still stand albeit only on the lands around the road, up in the air but also keeps them from attacking. He is the fastest shinobi in the elemental nations, there is nothing they could do to him right now that would prevent him from killing the child in time.

Tobirama allows himself to slow to a brisk walking pace as he edges ever closer to the border. The messenger has arrived at the compound, sending the chakra signatures there into turmoil as they rush to the center where Madara presumably resides. One of the other signatures currently present moves and finally Tobirama has a visual on the other shinobi as they stand in the center of the road a meter back from the border.

And Tobirama stops.

He stands exactly at the border and stares just below the guard’s eyes, Sharingan active and swirling. Kagami is looking around, successfully letting all present know that he lives and causing the two shinobi still hidden to simultaneously relax and tense. The woman standing in the center of the road opens her mouth to speak only to stop as Tobirama shifts his grip on the child.

Once again, his hand is gripping the back of Kagami’s clothing, right in the center of the uchiwa on the back. Weapons are drawn, one of the Uchiha still in the trees is rapidly moving through hand signs, Tobirama lifts his arm and sets the boy, safe and sound, still in one piece and holding his flowers in hand, back exactly on the other side of the border in Uchiha lands. He does not break  pseudo eye contact, his arm is still lifted, the hidden Uchiha not preparing a jutsu is moving into an ambush position.

In the silent battle of wills they ignore the child. He stumbles when he is placed on his feet but does not fall, at last showing signs of the shinobi training he’s received. They continue to ignore him as he shuffles around, eyes too focused on the immediate danger of their enemy in the moment. They ignore him right up until his places one of his flowers in the Senju’s hand, still outstretched in his statuesque stillness.

“Thank you Tobirama-san,” Kagami says in the continued silence after attention is shifted to him. The man stares at him emotionlessly for just a moment before returning his attention to the child’s clanmates.

“Keep better watch of your spawn, Uchiha.”

And he’s gone, using a shunshin to move to a distance he knows is out of sight of even the Sharingan. The three Uchiha at the border are moving in a panic, one of them has grabbed the child and is holding him so close that if he did not know better they would appear as one chakra signature. They are moving rapidly deeper into Uchiha lands and collide with the party that has left their compound within moments. The two chakra signatures that remain are fluctuating wildly, one of them heading rapidly west up the border, no doubt to warn the other guards of a possible impending attack, while the other remains vigilant at the road. The party meets them there, one of the signatures originally part of it having broken off and returned to the compound with the child, and break apart within moments to check the borders, a small party even going so far as to check the lands between the borders for him and others. Tobirama is long gone, his speed serving him to return to his clan’s lands quickly and the compound not long after.

He makes good on his promise and spends the rest of the day teaching the children more advanced kunai techniques. His job is done and he will likely never see the boy again outside of a battlefield.

The thought does not affect him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed! I do not know when it will be updated next, I've never been able to follow an update schedule to save my life but it should hopefully be soon. Next chapter has Hashi's reaction though so it'll be a treat. As always you can find my writing blog under the same name on tumblr at ravenclaws-do-it-better so shoot me an ask if you want to chat. This work will not be cross-posted onto fanfic.net as I'm going to stop posting over there for the most part and move everything onto here.  
> ~Rae

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Ajirogasa](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15901245) by [Kerzenlicht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kerzenlicht/pseuds/Kerzenlicht)




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